Brothers
by Nigiri Ashika
Summary: The story of why Jimmy's really an oncologist. No, there's no slash.


**A/N: **I know I haven't updated my stories recently and I'm really sorry but I am having major Writer's Block and I keep half-starting other projects and then giving up. But I have been writing some decent songs... but they aren't fanfics so I can't put them up here.

**Disclaimer: **I wish I owned Jimmy. I _do_ own Michael... for now.

**A/N2:** I started this forever ago, but I'm just working on it again now. It's been at least six months, maybe even a few years. I'm SO lucky I remember what this is about!

**Brothers**

I told you that I have two brothers. I didn't tell you that I used to have three.

Michael was always bigger, smarter, stronger, than me, but I never even considered resenting him for it. I idolized him- he was my role model. Every time something good happened in his life I wasn't _jealous_- I was inspired. So of course when he got accepted into the medical program at Johns Hopkins University I decided I would be a doctor too. When I got the letter telling me I had gotten into the same school as my older brother, I was ecstatic to say the least. My world had reached perfection- I was at the same school as my favorite person in the whole world, on the same path to the same future. We were even living together. I was the happiest I had ever been.

Then he got diagnosed with leukemia.

I denied it at first. I was still partying, and did great in school. I didn't want to have to deal with the fact that he might be gone soon. He started getting worse, but I still ignored the sickness. Finally one day my mom called the apartment we shared, and I wasn't home so she had to leave a message. I didn't get home until morning, and by that time she had left several messages. The first one was that his cancer was acting up and he had to go to the hospital. The second message said that I had to get to the hospital right away. The third she was crying so much I couldn't understand anything she said.

I rushed over to the hospital, still hung over from the night before. The hospital receptionist wouldn't tell me what room Michael was in, because I couldn't prove that I was family. Eventually my dad came out and told her who I was. He had been on his way to the car to go find me.

His face was unreadable. I didn't know what to think, because he never really showed any emotions. When we finally got to the hallway outside Michael's room, we saw my mother crying in a chair outside. That was the first time I had ever seen my father sad.

"Would you like to see him?" She barely got the words out before sobbing again. I stared at her for a few seconds, and then nodded.

My dad led me into the hospital room. The smell was giving me a headache, and the walls were a sickly eggshell color. There was a sink, and past that, a privacy curtain. My dad pulled the curtain out of the way, revealing Michael, my hero, my best friend, my big brother, white as a ghost and shivering under the thin hospital blanket. He didn't notice us come in, and it wasn't until my father said, "Michael, your brother is here." that he moved at all.

He looked at me, trying to recognise my face. "Jimmy." I felt the tears falling down my face. "Jimmy, I'm dying."

The realization of everything that I had been ignoring, everything I hadn't wanted to believe, it all hit me. I stopped crying and stared at him. I hadn't noticed that he had been losing weight for months, and as I looked at him now he looked like a completely different person. The boy I had grown up with, the one I followed everywhere and wanted to be just like when I grew up... was never going to grow up. Twenty years old, and it was all over.

I barely remember the funeral. A lot of people were there, and everyone was talking about what a great guy he had been. People I didn't know, had never met, or had met once, told me how they felt sorry for me and how much they missed my brother.

At school I started doing less work, even partying less. My teachers were good ones, though, and wouldn't let me fail. When I was twenty I dropped out.

I didn't know where to go, what to do. I had always thought my future would be set, whatever Michael did I would do. But I didn't have leukemia, and I didn't really want to die. I took a year off from life, moved in with my parents, and pretty much did absolutely nothing.

When I had been living with my parents for ten months, my mother decided it was time for me to go back to college. She said that I couldn't live with her and Dad any more, and she kicked me out. I had no money, but she offered to pay tuition and board if I went back to Johns Hopkins and stayed in the dorms. The next semester, I was enrolled, and stuck living with the asshole that would eventually become my best friend. Yes, I have lived with Greg House _twice_ and lived to tell the tale.

Studying was the only thing I was good at, so I avoided life through school. I put all of my efforts into studying, working hard, and never, ever partying. With House as a roomie, that was not easy. But I was able to say no to the late-night beers, television marathons, and the occasional prostitute. I fought life with tooth and nail, and made up my mind that I would not live for me any more. I had no reason to live for me- I was the worthless shit that was hungover when my brother died. Later I decided that I lived for _him_.

I didn't know what field he had planned to go in to, so making that descision was hard. I wanted to do something that would make him proud of me, and proud of himself for inspiring me. I started studying neurology, because he had always been fascinated with the human brain and mind, but it didn't feel right. It just wasn't me. When I realized that I felt like I had wasted precious time, his time, and vowed to make it up to him. I called our mother, to ask her what I should do. I had never asked her for advice before.

She told me to follow my heart, and I thought that meant become a cardiologist. Luckily, she realized that I had misunderstood, and told me instead to be true to myself, instead of trying to follow in my dead brother's footsteps. I had to think on that one for a while. One day, Greg was drinking a beer and watching tv, and I asked him what I should do with my life. He met my gaze with his piercing blue eyes and said, "Jimmy, how the fuck should I know? It's your life, do something that matters to you."

At the time I wasn't greatful to him, I was just pissed that he didn't give me a straight answer. But after a couple of days his words came back to me, and I realized what I had to do. What I wanted to do. What I was meant to do. My idol, my best friend, my brother had died from leukemia, and nothing mattered more to me than him.

I decided to become an oncologist.


End file.
